As though suffering from depression was not challenging and debilitating enough, some sufferers find no relief from treatment or experience side effects to medications that make taking them impossible. An estimated 22 per cent of Canadians with major depressive disorder have such treatment-resistant depression (TRD). While the situation may seem hopeless, one therapy called repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS) has shown significant efficacy as a non-invasive procedure with minimal side effects, offering a viable treatment option.
Contrary to the saying, sticks and stones aren’t breaking kids’ bones – or not their forearms, at least. Approximately one in three children and adolescents1 will get a bone fracture. Most of these will be of the forearm2 and they peak during early-to-mid puberty, which are times of more rapid growth.
Although the U.S. Food and Drug Administration recently approved the drug Addyi™ (flibanserin) – also known as “the female Viagra”, even though it does not work like Viagra – for women with low sex drive, its serious potential side-effects and contraindications (warranting a black box label on the medication) suggest that it may not be the answer for all women with low libidos. Luckily, women with sexual desire problems have access to a different drug-free and side-effects-free option. The therapy is called mindfulness – the practice of non-judgemental present moment awareness.
During their residencies at St. Paul’s Hospital in Downtown Vancouver, Dr. Erin Cusack and Dr. Rannie Tao were completing long-term electives at Vancouver Coastal Health’s Three Bridges Community Health Centre when they both noticed that many of their patients were suffering from chronic pain conditions and feeling that their needs were not being met by the health care system. What was striking to both of them was the sense of hopelessness among those patients.
Although it’s not the proverbial 10-mile hike in the snow uphill (both ways), getting to school as part of living in an urban environment gets teens more physically active than traveling to and from school in a suburban setting, according to a study out of the Centre for Hip Health and Mobility (CHHM), a Vancouver Coastal Health Research Institute centre.
Canada’s doctors face a challenging task: help shift healthcare and health research to being more patient-oriented and do so with high levels of efficiency that safeguard the current healthcare system in which resources are already stretched. Effective knowledge translation (KT) – turning research knowledge and innovation into new strategies, action, devices, etc., that improve patient care and healthcare systems – provides the evidence needed by healthcare professionals and policy-makers to determine how to meet the challenge of delivering the best care in a cost-effective manner.
Call it the Dr. Google effect. Thanks to today’s search engines, seemingly boundless internet, and social media, people who are not medical professionals are better equipped than ever to investigate the symptoms, illnesses, and conditions that ail them. According to Vancouver Coastal Health Research Institute scientist Samantha Pollard, such availability and accessing of health-related information are partly why health care is becoming more patient-centred and shared decision-making (SDM) between patients and physicians is increasingly being supported by public health policy.
Maple Ridge resident Rina Varley distinctly remembers the powerful feeling of relief that washed over her after talking to a psychiatric genetic counsellor from the Psychiatric Genetic Counselling Clinic about her generalized anxiety disorder (GAD) for the first time.
“I’d always wondered if trauma that I’d experienced earlier in my life had caused my GAD. Emily (the psychiatric genetic counsellor) let me know that while trauma can exacerbate GAD, it certainly doesn’t cause mental illness,” says Varley.
